Cloud usage is rocketing amongst UK business users – but the final decision making falls to the head of IT or the chief information officer in almost three in five (59%) cases, according to latest research.

The research, from cloud hosting provider Cobweb Solutions, shows more organisations are turning to cloud for all their business needs, with UK cloud penetration reaching a high of 84%.

78% of businesses are using more than one cloud-based service, figures which correlate

Dropbox has announced its number of users has exceeded 400 million, with more than eight million business customers also on board.

The figures, disclosed on the occasion of the cloud storage provider’s eighth birthday, also reveal an impressive growth in the UK market, opened up six months ago. The company has grown from three to 10 offices over the past year.

According to the figures, 4,000 edits to documents are made each second on Dropbox, with users syncing 1.2 billion files...

The Cloud World Forum event, which starts tomorrow in London and will have this publication in attendance, will more than likely discuss business cloud strategies, security fears, as well as the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) and DevOps concepts.

Among the list of expected attendees, there is a not unreasonable amount of security professionals from the private sector. Also there is cloud-based enterprise collaboration...

Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP), a venture capital firm which has been investing in cloud computing for almost 20 years, has released a bullish prediction on cloud trends in the coming years.

Software as a service (SaaS) is approaching 30% of total application spend, compound annual growth rate hitting 17.6% between 2013 and 2018. On premise, by contrast, is at 2.8%. BVP also argues the ‘tipping point’ of cloud CRM will hit in 2016; by 2018, the VC firm expects cloud CRM to...

Last week, the European Union agreed on proposed Data Protection Regulations that potentially impact all organisations that either use or process the personal data of EU citizens. There will now be further consultations before these become statute, but for the first time these will be regulations, rather than directives; which mean that individual EU member states will have little room for interpretation in how they are applied.

Enterprise cloud storage provider Box has announced first quarter revenue figures of $65.6 million, a 45% increase year over year.

The company noted billings of $69.8m for the first quarter of fiscal 2016 and a non-GAAP operating loss of $32.6m – 50% of revenue. This contrasts with first quarter of fiscal 2015, whereby non-GAAP operating loss was 69% of revenue. GAAP operating loss for this quarter was at 71% of revenue, compared to the previous year’s 83%.

The average number of cloud apps used per enterprise has declined for the first time, according to the latest data from Netskope.

This shift – which the company notes is “consolidation efforts from IT begin[ning] to take hold” – is exacerbated by the lack of enterprise-grade security in most cloud apps. 89.6% of apps used are not enterprise-ready, and 90% of data loss prevention violations occur in cloud storage apps.

Employees at more than half (55%) of organisations use public file, sync and share (FSS) services. Yet almost three quarters (73%) said they were looking for or had implemented an alternative, according to a new report from CTERA.

More than half (59%) of that number said they favoured a private cloud FSS solution run either on hosted infrastructure or in their own data centre.

35% of organisations have experienced corporate data leakage in 2014 as a result of employees sharing files via...

Workers in small to medium businesses (SMBs) feel happier and more productive when using cloud apps in their day to day work, according to new research from Kronos.

The study, which focused on 1000 European knowledge workers in SMBs, notes how late many small businesses are in moving to the cloud, arguing SMB leaders are “yet to realise [its] strategic value”. Yet almost two thirds (63%) believe the majority of their...

Investments in emerging enterprise software companies increased 53% from Q3 to Q4, 2014 according to MoneyTree Report, a collaborative research initiative between PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association. A graphic from the latest available data shows how software investments were 39% of all investments in Q4, 2014.

Although Box’s stock value has had its ups and downs since its IPO in January, going public sent an important signal to investors. Aaron Levie has demonstrated that a subscription-based service is now the only viable business model in the technology industry today.

When Salesforce debuted in 2004, there was very little market awareness of recurring revenue-based business models. They were mostly associated with print media and telecoms. Eight years later, Workday’s successful...

After 27 years at the top, it remains a slight culture shock to note Larry Ellison as Oracle’s chief technical officer. But despite this he’s still stealing the headlines, by telling analysts in an earnings call his belief that Oracle will sell more new SaaS and PaaS business than Salesforce in 2015.

Finland has the highest proportion of enterprises in the EU using cloud computing, according to figures from Eurostat.

The findings from the European Union’s statistical office, from December 2014, saw more than half (51%) of Finnish enterprises in the cloud. Nordic and Benelux countries typically scored highly, with Sweden and Denmark in the top four and Netherlands and Belgium in the top 10. 24% of UK enterprises use cloud computing services.

The nature of work is evolving; employees are mobile and cloud-enabled, free to work anywhere from almost any device. In response to this shift, the BYOD trend has emerged stronger than ever. Coupled with this is the growth of employees desiring more accessible applications. However, these factors have undoubtedly contributed to the emergence of shadow IT, which is creating a problem for many IT departments.

Applications such as Dropbox are increasingly being used by employees for business...

There has been an influx of emerging technologies across the storage landscape. Many vendors are using the exact same hardware but are figuring out ways to do a lot of smarter things with the software. In this post, I’ll cover a handful of vendors who are doing a great job innovating at the software layer to improve storage technology and performance.

Nimble

Nimble was founded by the same people who did Data Domain and does data compression. Their success led to EMC buying...

Amazon Web Services (AWS) remains the most popular enterprise cloud service, according to the latest quarterly report from Skyhigh Networks, while the number of cloud services used by firms continues to rise.

According to the report the average employee uses 27 apps at work, while the average number of cloud services in use per company was 897 in Q414, which compares favourably against 831 in Q3 and 626 in Q413. The biggest rise in app type was development, which saw a 97% spike in...

We’ve reached it, the critical stage between cloud growth and cloud maturity. And there’s no need to deny that with cloud maturity come great opportunities. Just like Uncle Ben said, right? But more seriously, as a Managed Service Provider (MSP), how can you be sure that adding the cloud to your organisation now is right? Did you at all consider the cloud as a more...

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